<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "+//ISBN 0-9673008-1-9//DTD OEB 1.0 Document//EN"
  "http://openebook.org/dtds/oeb-1.0/oebdoc1.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/x-oeb1-document; charset=utf-8" />
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/x-oeb1-css" href="DrBillBio.css" />
<title>Bill Wattenburg’s Background: Blue Water Contamination</title>
</head>

<body>

<h1>Blue Water (Copper) Contamination in Homes</h1>

<h2>(1991)</h2>

<p>This is the latest of Wattenburg’s bizarre escapades reported in press stories all over the
country. We contacted many of the people who were on the scene to get interesting parts of
this story that were not covered by the press.</p>

<p>Hundreds of expensive new homes in the affluent area of Danville, California, had suffered
serious copper contamination (blue water) for several years. Lawsuits were filed in all directions
because homeowners had to use bottled water, children in schools had become sick, and home
values were dropping. Neither the water company (EBMUD) nor the home builders would take
responsibility. Both had spent over $5,000,000 on water corrosion experts and lawyers who were
investigating the problem.</p>

<p>A professor of civil engineering who was on the project at times has told us that he could
show us hundreds of technical reports on blue water from around the world in the last fifty years
where corrosion experts have been unable to completely explain the cause of “blue water”. He
told us: “In many cases the problem just mysteriously goes away for reasons that ‘corrosion
experts’ cannot adequately explain, although most take credit for doing something the solved their
local problem. However, each one claims he found a different solution that does not seem to
work everywhere else.”</p>

<p>We called Wattenburg to tell us why and how he solved the problem in Danville. He
cautioned us immediately that he did not completely solve the problem, in spite of what the
newspaper and technical journals reported. He said: “It is one thing to isolate a problem and then
make it go away. I do that with obnoxious people all the time. But it is another thing to explain
why they came around in the first place.” (This may have been a message to us, but he softened
up after that.)</p>

<br />
<p><b>Here is his story:</b></p>
<br />

<p>He said he got involved when some Danville home owners called him on his KGO radio
show in May 1991. They pleaded with him to help them because they were losing their life
savings in the value of their homes. They described the blue water problem to him on the air.
They told him that there was conclusive proof that the contamination was copper hydroxide.
They told him that the only copper pipes were the water pipes in their homes. He says he “shot
his mouth off and told them that good scientists should have no problem finding the problem very
quickly if they did the proper experiments.”</p>

<blockquote>
<p>“They asked me how much I thought it should cost. I stupidly said that it shouldn’t cost
more than a few thousand dollars for a good scientist to make the right measurements. I told
them to call the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory which is right near them. The next day,
I got a call from the Livermore Lab saying they were getting calls from people pleading with them
to help, and the newspapers were asking them why the laboratory didn’t help solve this serious
problem. Livermore said they couldn’t get involved because there was litigation going on and the
water company was a public agency that had not requested their services. I got the picture, but I
was stuck. I went out there the next day to take a look.”</p>
</blockquote>

<p>A civil engineering professor who was working on the problem as a consultant to the
homebuilders told us the story we summarize below:</p>

<p>He says that Wattenburg quickly made a startling discovery right in the faces of the water
corrosion experts who had been working on the problem for a year. They had been studying
only the corrosion characteristics of the water in the house pipes. They had expensive water
chemistry testing laboratories set up in the garages of two blue water homes supplied by the
builders. Wattenburg walked out of one of these laboratories while they were still telling him
about all their experiments. He got some things out of his car. Then he stuck some small copper
rods into the ground at various points around the house and measured the voltages between these
points with a little voltmeter that he carried in his pocket. They thought he was a little strange.</p>

<p>He found electrical voltages of about half a volt in the ground all around the homes and
between the ground and the water pipes in the homes. “He did this within about twenty minutes
after he arrived. The gadgets he had in the trunk of his car looked like an electronics laboratory.
He then told us to go to the hardware store and buy all the small copper wire we could find, I
remember the driver asking him how much? He calmly said: ‘Oh, about a mile of it, if you can.’ It
was rather amazing what we did all the rest of that day.”</p>

<blockquote>
<p>“Wattenburg made some more measurements around and inside several more blue water
houses. Then he told all the corrosion consultants who were gathered around that the problem
probably wasn’t in the houses or in their copper water pipes. The real cause was most
likely coming from the power lines or EBMUD water mains somehow. At that point, most of them
walked away shaking their heads. Wattenburg told me that he was surprised that these guys were
corrosion experts. He said that the corrosion was most likely happening because there was
electrochemistry going on in the copper pipes. He said that they obviously hadn’t worried about
what was producing the ‘electro’ part of the electrochemistry they thought they were studying.
It made sense to me after I thought about it a while. …</p>

<p>“I remember one of them asking him what degrees or credentials he had as a corrosion
engineer. I’ll never forget what Wattenburg said to the guy. He asked the guy how long he had
been working on this problem. This very huffy guy said he had been working on the project for a
year. Wattenburg told him: ‘Where I went to school. we don’t give degrees to engineers who
can’t solve a problem in a year.’</p>

<p>“Fortunately, I knew who Wattenburg was. I remembered what he had done to a lot of
big-time engineers on the BART project many years earlier. I found it best to just help him and
see what would happen. …</p>

<p>“The water company, EBMUD, claimed that Wattenburg’s theory was nonsense. The
water mains leading into the houses were plastic lines. They said these lines couldn’t possibly
feed electrical current into the house water pipes. Wattenburg asked them to explain the electrical
voltages he found in the ground and between the houses. They pointed the finger at the power
company, PG&amp;E. I remember Wattenburg smiling as he told us: ‘Well, that will get PG&amp;E out
here to help us in a hurry, won’t it?’</p>

<p>“The next thing he did was cut all the electrical power off from the test houses and measure
the voltages again. The voltages in the ground and on the house water pipes were still there. I
saw him go down the street opening manholes to the water mains all over the place while
suspicious EBMUD employees got on their mobile phones and called their office.</p>

<p>“Over the next few weeks, Wattenburg used his long copper wires to measure voltages
along the large steel water mains which were buried deep underground. The water company had
told him that there was no way they would dig up the lines at various points so he could measure
them. So, he figured out a very clever way that no one had thought about before. The water
mains were protected by devices called sacrificial anodes which are connected to the lines below
ground. But electrical wires attached to these devices are brought up to the ground at various
places along the lines, about every half mile. This is why he wanted the mile of copper wire. We
stretched the copper wire between the anode stations and he measured the voltage from one to
the next. In this way, he mapped the voltages on the steel water mains all the way to the water
storage tanks where the lines began up on the hills.”</p>
</blockquote>

<p>The home builders assigned one of their construction superintendents to help Wattenburg.
Here is what he observed: </p>

<blockquote>
 <p>“The Power company, PG&amp;E, was real happy to help him. He was getting them off the
 hook for ten million dollars of liability. I remember one day he calmly told them to cut the power
 off of a whole area in Danville because he had to be sure that these water main voltages were not
 coming from the PG&amp;E power lines. I couldn’t believe it when a whole goddamn shopping center
 went dead right before my eyes about fifteen minutes later. … He only wanted it off for a few
 minutes. … Hell, they’d have put me in jail if I had even cut their power accidentally.</p>

 <p>“It really became a circus after that. The water company, EBMUD, realized what he was
 doing. They refused to give him permission to measure the voltages on their water mains at
 places where their lines were behind fences and near their pumping plants. Wattenburg just told
 us to get more copper wire. PG&amp;E sent out two more line crews that very day and they helped
 stretch the copper wires around these areas for a mile or more while EBMUD employees stood
 guard at their gates to make sure he didn’t trespass on their property. It was like two armies
 facing off each other on the battle line. It was ludicrous. These are two companies that are
 supposed to be public utilities. …</p>

 <p>“Wattenburg’s answer was to call the newspapers and tell them to come out and watch
 what was happening. The reporters showed up in droves. It was on the TV news for several
 days. Finally, the general manager of EBMUD threw in the towel and asked to see Wattenburg.
 Wattenburg told him to come out where he was working. They had a private conversation while
 Wattenburg continued to make measurements along the water mains. EBMUD announced that
 they were going to join the investigation the next day. The EBMUD gates and all the pumping
 plants were opened for Wattenburg.</p>

 <p>“A PG&amp;E engineer told me that an hour after Wattenburg walked into the first EBMUD
 pumping plant, I think it was called the New Scenic East Plant, he found a major problem that
 EBMUD engineers had told the newspapers just couldn’t possibly happen. I remember this
 big-shot from EBMUD saying on television that all the EBMUD water mains and their pumping plants
 were completely isolated from the power lines. He said that they had double-checked that there
 was no electricity getting into their water mains or plants.</p>

 <p>“Wattenburg got PG&amp;E to cut off the power to the plant for a few minutes and he did
 some measurements that even the PG&amp;E engineers didn’t understand. They objected as well as
 the EBMUD engineers. However, the PG&amp;E manager ordered them to do what Wattenburg
 wanted. I think the PG&amp;E manager’s name was Walt Musso from Walnut Creek. Wattenburg
 then showed EBMUD that they had a major electrical short across the water mains leading into
 and out of the plant.</p>

 <p>“This hit the newspapers the next day. The EBMUD public relations people were eating
 crow. EBMUD construction crews were working for the next month digging enormous holes
 around the plant to find and fix the short in the water mains that were supposed to be isolated
 from the PG&amp;E lines.”</p>
</blockquote>

<p>He told us a funny story that happened next:</p>

<blockquote>
 <p>“Wattenburg casually told the EBMUD construction foreman one day that they should not do something he had observed them doing
 with a big backhoe near this enormous water main that led into the pumping plant. The foreman
 said that he had been operating backhoes for twenty years and he had never broken a water line
 yet. He said that he was going to dig out all the dirt around the large main line for about a
 hundred feet. He bragged that they wouldn’t even have to turn off the water pressure in the line
 and interrupt service to their customers while they were doing it. Wattenburg told them that that
 was what he was afraid of. Wattenburg did a quick calculation of the pressure forces in the
 curved pipe they were exposing. The foreman laughed and said that EBMUD engineers had done
 their own calculations, or something to that effect.</p>

 <p>“Wattenburg told the PG&amp;E crews working with us that they should get the hell out there
 for a while. About an hour later, while we were having coffee at the Blackhawk Cafe, the water
 main burst and it looked like Niagara Falls had appeared on the hillside above Danville.
 Wattenburg didn’t even look surprised when we hollered at him to come see what had happened.
 He didn’t even look up from the newspaper he was reading…”</p>
</blockquote>

<p>A PG&amp;E lineman remembered:</p>

<blockquote>
 <p>“Wattenburg did most of his work at night for the next two months. He would show up
 sometimes at two in the morning and work until dawn. PG&amp;E would send my crew out to help
 him whenever he wanted us.”</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Finally, Wattenburg put the word out that he had located the source of the blue water
problem. There was a big news conference. Wattenburg showed the press some maps of how he
had traced the electrical voltages all over the maze of water mains in the
Danville–Blackhawk area. The voltages all followed one new water main that EBMUD had installed a few years
earlier, the New Scenic Line, I believe. This was one of the new super-insulated water mains that
was wrapped with a thick plastic coating so that no electrical current from the ground could get
into the line and corrode it. Wattenburg explained that this also turned this new water main into
a very good insulated electrical power line that could carry small electrical currents for long
distances without the current being dissipated into the ground. Older water mains that are not so
well insulated quickly lose any current that gets onto them.</p>

<p>Walt Musso, the PG&amp;E manager who was assigned to work with Wattenburg tells about
the dramatic meeting that he attended with Wattenburg the day before the press conference:</p>
<p>They met the engineering and operations managers from EBMUD at a PG&amp;E office in
Dublin. Wattenburg had asked them to bring their maps of the entire EBMUD water system in
the Danville area with them. The EBMUD engineering manager had been very defiant toward
Wattenburg all along. He had been insisting to the press that Wattenburg was just on a wild
goose chase and a publicity stunt.</p>

<p>Musso remembered that Wattenburg began the meeting with a short discussion of what
happened to all the top BART engineers years earlier when they had refused to tell the truth about
technical problems in the BART system that endangered many people. Then he pushed a map
across the table to the EBMUD managers. This map showed that the voltages he had measured
all centered around one new water main that Wattenburg had tracked for so many days and
nights. Wattenburg let them study the map for a while. The EBMUD engineering manager said
this was “all a lot of bullshit.”</p>

<p>“Wattenburg turned to the EBMUD operations manager and told him very sternly:
‘You know damn well that all the blue water houses are served by just this one new water main, don’t
you?’ The engineering manager got up and walked out. The others wouldn’t answer for several
minutes. Wattenburg confronted the operations manager: ‘You’ve known this all along, haven’t
you? God-damn-it, I’m giving you a chance to keep your asses out of a lot of trouble. Now make
it quick, or I’m going to turn all of my maps and yours over to the district attorney. I notice on
your new water service maps that you carefully didn’t show which water mains all the blue water
houses are connected to, but you show the connections for all the other houses in the
area.’</p>

<p>“The operations manager nodded sheepishly and admitted that Wattenburg was right. That
is all he would say for a few minutes. We just sat there looking at each other in disbelief. Finally,
Wattenburg demanded: ‘Is it true that you have known all along that the blue water houses are all
fed from this one new line?’ One EBMUD guy tried to say that the new and old water mains are
crisscrossed all over the area such that one house may be connected to an old line and the house
next door is connected to the new line. Wattenburg snapped: ‘Yes, and that is why some of the
poor bastards put their life savings into a house they thought was safe because the neighbor didn’t
have blue water. They had no way of knowing that their dream house was connected to your
new water main. How long have you known this?’</p>

<p>“The operations manager pulled out a map that they had not shown us at the beginning of
the meeting. He said they had just made this map ‘a few weeks ago.’ Wattenburg looked at it. It
confirmed what he had discovered in all his work. This crude EBMUD map showed that all the
blue water houses were connected to the New Scenic East Line. Wattenburg told them he hoped
that they could convince a judge that they had just discovered this and hadn’t known it for all the
time that EBMUD had been blaming the home builders and letting homeowners suffer and spend
million of dollars… .</p>

<p>“Wattenburg asked them why they hadn’t told anybody about this. The operations manager
said that EBMUD engineers and attorneys didn’t consider it significant because it didn’t prove
what was really causing the blue water. It just localized where it was occurring. They still insisted
that the only copper was in the copper water pipes in the homes and that the EBMUD water lines
couldn’t be the problem no matter how the homes were hooked up. Wattenburg told them that
they weren’t sending the copper into the houses. EBMUD’s new water main was clearly sending
something worse that was making the copper come off the water pipes in the blue water houses.
‘And you guys had better find out what it is. I’m sure as hell not going to do it for
you.’</p>

<p>“The EBMUD engineering manager came back to the meeting and didn’t say a word. He
picked up their maps and they left. Wattenburg commented as we left: ‘You want to bet that
even the FBI won’t be able to find that one map anywhere tomorrow?’ We went over to a
nearby bar for lunch. He curled up in his car afterwards and went to sleep.”</p>

<p>Wattenburg quit the investigation after the newspapers announced his discovery of the
“Blue Water Pipeline” (San Francisco Chronicle, September 19, 1991, page A17). He said that he
had done his part and he didn’t want to get involved in litigation. EBMUD’s New Scenic East
Line became known as the ’Blue Water Line’ after that. EBMUD didn’t deny it any longer. They
organized a multi-million dollar task force to solve the problem. Later press reports say that they
and the homebuilders are working together to try to cure the problem with the water line.</p>

<p>Our professor contact says that he is surprised that Wattenburg didn’t continue with his
research and publish the results of his investigation in the technical journals somewhere. He
points out that blue water is still a serious problem around the world. He feels that maybe
Wattenburg didn’t want to be associated with “corrosion engineers” whom he often described as
“guess-work artists”. He says that Wattenburg was the only one who wasn’t paid by one side or
the other in the controversy. He said he once asked Wattenburg whom he was working for and
Wattenburg answered: “Me. That way I don’t have to go to court. This is what happens to you
when you shoot your mouth off at the wrong time.”</p>

</body>
</html>